A sponsor designs rather a rather low-mintage series, enough to get collectors and investors to buy in based on Low Mintage rarity.

Then each year, they slightly change the design... And lower the mintage... Until the last years wherea frenzy of sorts builds for those collectors who have bought in, invested heavily, and find they are spending ridiculously high amounts in an effort to complete their series?

Game of "Musical chairs", anyone?

Logged

"He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good."

Now that Bob mentioned me saying the "mintage trap", I might as well explain it a little further.

Rarity is the top priority with circulating coins, whether it is a pattern, a bank specimen, a trial strike or a survivor of melting/confiscation/aborted production run. Circulating coins are strictly controlled and regulated by the government. They normally have a humongous mintage. Circulating coins with a small mintage are exceptions and as such they are very special.

With medals, often the mintage is determined by the mint or the private group/person commissioning the medal. The mintage can be manipulated to the advantage of the sponsors/commissioners. It can be artificially very small. If we apply the same rules as those for circulating coins and blindly seek rarity with medals, we may fall into the mintage trap.

I am not saying rarity is not important with medals. The Great Wall silver medals are extremely rare and highly sought after. There are some early brass medals mostly from Shanghai Mint which have a tiny surviving mintage due to loss after their release. (Who cared about brass medals with little melting value?) Their current rarity was not intentional at the time of striking. Before someone decides to fork out a large sum of money for a new medal of a small mintage, beware of the difference between circulating coins and medals. There are tons of such medals of a small mintage out there, and more are on the way. If I see a piedfort version of the Nanjing pandas with an even smaller mintage, I won't be surprised at all. Keeping a perspective on it will save us from falling into the mintage trap.